As a boy I had a vague appreciation for Memorial Day because my father, a Vietnam veteran, treated it as sacrosanct. After watching the morning parade in our home town, he spent time alone, somber and distant, while my friends flocked to the beaches and malls with their families to celebrate the beginning of summer.
Were they wrong to celebrate, I wondered.
I didn’t know. My father rarely spoke about his five years in the Marines. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized he still carried the war with him every day, along with the faint scar across his cheek from an enemy bullet that somehow didn’t kill him in a jungle 13 years before I was born….
I really resonated with this piece. I too was in Iraq in 2006 and Memorial Day has been so much different since. We too were so blessed as to lose none from our battalion. At the same time I would guess that all of us who came home lost something while we were there. We knew of others who had died. Some were people we had met in the course of our work, in the dining facility or the the gym. Others were just an event that came through in the daily reports.
Today is a profoundly sad day. I went to the National Cemetery to visit LCPL Louis Qualls. He died in Fallujah in November of 2004. I notified his father of his death and officiated at his funeral. I remembered 1st Sgt Luke Mercandante who survived our tour in Iraq but was killed in Afghanistan. I still mourn Major Jimmy Johnson who came home and, after finding out about his wife’s infidelity while he was deployed, killed himself.
Despite the sadness, today is also a day of great joy. I remember the incredible bond of brotherhood shared in combat. I give thanks for the men (some of whom are half my age) who I prayed with and who protected me with their bravery and skill. I know what it means when McCrae calls us not to break faith and to carry the torch.
May they rest in peace.
Great comments, Frreed, thanks for sharing.